Failure to Replicate: Sound the Alarm

Failure to Replicate: Sound the Alarm

We’ve come across an interesting article in The DANA Foundation’s Cerebrum about an investigation into the reproducibility of findings in social & cognitive psychology.

The editor notes:

Science has always relied on reproducibility to build confidence in experimental results. Now, the most comprehensive investigation ever done about the rate and predictors of reproducibility in social and cognitive sciences has found that regardless of the analytic method or criteria used, fewer than half of the original findings were successfully replicated. While a failure to reproduce does not necessarily mean the original report was incorrect, the results suggest that more rigorous methods are long overdue.

From the article:

…There is clearly a need for more replication studies, done by independent investigators…

…replication experiments have been relatively unwelcome: They have attracted little funding, typically have been harder to get published, and have received little academic recognition…